Casey tops Union's list of injury concerns

Union forward Conor Casey goes up for a header over Houston Dynamo defender Bobby Boswell, right, during a game last July. Recently, Casey has been hampered by a “soft-tissue” injury during the Union’s training camp in Florida. (AP Photo /Houston Chronicle, Smiley N. Pool )

After a season spent rehashing no-news injury updates at his weekly press conferences, Philadelphia Union manager John Hackworth finds his players nursing a plethora of bumps and bruises as they wind down their training camp in Florida.

The headliner on the injury front is forward Conor Casey, but Hackworth has gone through the club’s final few days of training in the Sunshine State without a handful of regulars.

Casey is the big one, nursing an undisclosed soft-tissue injury over which the club is proceeding with great caution.

The 32-year-old limped out of the gates last year as well, missing two of the season’s first three games before taking part in 30 of the next 31. Despite the sputtering start, he was immensely productive with 10 goals and five assists, so the physical aspect is the only part that has Hackworth worried when it comes to his big striker.

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“We’re not real concerned. Conor is a fantastic pro,” Hackworth said. “He also has qualities about him that quite frankly we don’t have on our team in other players. He’s working hard to get himself healthy, and when he’s healthy, it’ll be an easy integration for him to get back on the team. We just want to make sure we get him back 100 percent to make sure we don’t risk having him out longer.”

Also on the shelf are Michael Lahoud and Antoine Hoppenot, but Hackworth believes he “should have them available, no problem” for the March 8 opener at Portland. Rookie Pedro Ribeiro is about a week or two behind that timetable, per Hackworth’s reckoning, while rookie defender Richie Marquez’s knee injury will take slightly longer.

The looming question mark is right back Sheanon Williams, who underwent an MRI Thursday to determine the extent of an injury that forced him off the field in the first half of Wednesday’s 0-0 draw with Toronto FC in Orlando.

The injuries complicate Hackworth’s decision of having to trim the roster to 30 players by March 1. But the Union skipper’s goal this offseason was to bring in enough talent to make the culling of the herd a daunting task.

“On a quality level, this year is going to be much, much more difficult,” Hackworth said. “On a personal level and just as a professional with the way you work with the players, I don’t think it ever gets easy. You work with players, you see what they’re like, you appreciate what they bring on a daily basis. And at the end of it, you have to tell a young player that they don’t have a job anymore or that they don’t have a spot on your roster, and that’s an awful tough thing to do.”

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Hackworth was forthcoming about the planning behind the deal which landed the Union 25-year-old central defender Austin Berry earlier this week.

While Hackworth admitted that discussions between he and Chicago coach Frank Yallop had been ongoing for “a few weeks,” Hackworth was candid in expressing his surprise that the Union were able to acquire such a commodity that filled their needs this late in the window.

“Yes, there is,” Hackworth responded. “I’m not going to shy away from telling you that from a starting point, this one was good for us and everything that we really wanted. So we’re happy and feel fortunate that we now have him on our team.”

Berry, the 2012 MLS rookie of the year, had become surplus to requirements for the Fire, which has acquired three veteran defenders (Bakary Soumare from the Union last May, Jhon Kennedy Hurtado and Patrick Ianni) in the last nine months. That depth made Berry, who played every MLS minute last season, expendable, and he was shipped off to fill the Union’s gaping defensive void in exchange for allocation money.